There are a couple of different versions of Puppy 4.20 with the most visual difference being the "blinky" icon -- yours looks like a small television screen located in the lower right bar of your screen. I believe that tells me that you are using the "official" 4.20 release. I was using a derivative that has a few differences in it, but that's nothing we need to worry about yet. I also tried the official 4.20 on my buddy's machine and -- sound worked out of the box (until I ran the Alsa Sound Wizard, anyway).

The Alsa Sound Wizard changes your /etc/modprobe.conf file and I believe that is what caused our sound to "break" on these two Gateway machines. Of course, we still have to prove that to ourselves!

Before we do anything drastic, though, I want you to do a few more things for me. Boot from your LIVE CD, but as soon as you see the boot screen with this

Code:

Puppy will boot automatically in 8 seconds...
boot:

I want you to type

Code:

puppy pfix=ram

and hit your keyboard's Enter key.

This causes Puppy to ignore your hard drive save file and acts like a fresh installation. After you see the desktop and calendar appear, I want you to reset (maximize) the sound levels -- using only sGmixer from the Menu and Alsamixer from the Console. Please, DO NOT RUN ALSA SOUND WIZARD this time.

Empty the trash, try you tube, play a CD -- test your out-of-the-box sound. Open the desktop Play icon and maximize sound there, too. Do you have sound?

If the answer is yes, I want you to copy the /etc/modprobe.conf file to a USB stick or another place on your computer's hard drive -- in sda2, perhaps? Shutdown Puppy 4.2 in the normal way but -- when it asks

Code:

<SAVE TO FILE> <SAVE TO CD> <DO NOT SAVE>

select <DO NOT SAVE>

If you do not have sound... well, either way, post back to me.

In my earlier days, I would simply start fresh from this point -- but I see you have Bon Echo added and we will try to keep those things when we fix this....

Patriot, I am inclined to agree. Upgrading Alsa via your .pet might be the best solution. BTW, your .pet was another successful solution to the sound issues I have experienced with my Dell Mini-9, eliminating the need to add anything to Boxpup 413's /etc/modprobe.conf.

I have been experimenting with the 4.20-variations of Puppy on my buddy's Gateway 7305 laptop and have found sound to work out-of-the box; even bringing up the ALSA WIZARD screen breaks the sound output, requiring the deletion of that frugal pup_save file or the possible replacement of the corrupted /etc/modprobe.conf file.

Turk Nailik, what is the model number of your particular laptop? I am not sure why sound would work on my end, but not on yours... but then, Gateway is sorta' famous for outsourcing and building with whatever parts were available at the time of order. Sounds like I am rambling, here. Sorry, but I am running out of ideas.

If my buddy's Gateway and yours do have the same hardware, the best advice I can come up with to date is:

I tried to download the .pet files by clicking of Patriot's files. They seemed to download, but during the install the computer froze. I waited about 5 to 10 minutes then hard booted. I then tried the settings on sgmixer and alsamixer - and alas no sound...

Alsa pet install notes:
1. Please note your kernel version.
2. Do not install from a fat32/ntfs partition. Download/copy to /tmp or any ext2 partition before installing.
3. A quick way to test would be using pfix=ram if you have enough ram.

I also have a Gateway .Puppy 4.2 live cd.NO sound.I did all the things that were suggested.I stumbled upon this solution ,why it works I don't know,maybe someone else does.When powering up wait for the Gateway screen,press F2 to enter Bios setup.You don't have to do anything just press F10 and exit saving changes.Puppy will boot up and you should have sound. I tried this afew times and everything works woof woof on delete,cd audio,and video sound.Thanks for all the info!

You might be on to something! When I was helping my buddy out with a frugal install of Puppy on his Gateway, I did open his laptop's BIOS to change his boot order, save, and exit. Hmmm...

I have learned a bit while trying to help these guys with their Gateway laptops, and will try to summarize it from memory here:

These particular Gateway laptops are using AC97 sound that **should** be picked up by Puppy's defaults.

Code:

INTEL 18X0 8086:24C5 (REV3)

Running the Sound Wizard -- or even selecting the Sound Wizard without actually using it -- broke the sound on my buddy's Gateway. I strongly recommend you do this only when running as a Live CD (no save file) to see what hardware is detected before any installation begins.

The last part of Turk Nailik's modprobe.conf file looks like this:
165 alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0m
166 alias sound-slot-0 snd-intel8x0m
My buddy's modprobe.conf file did not have the m's until after I had selected the sound wizard and broken his sound. Then his modprobe.conf file looked exactly like Turk Nailik's and the machine was silent.

I **think** this is showing what Puppy **believes** you have for your sound chipset(s) / sound modem / whatever (don't know the correct terminology). Since Turk Nailik had run his sound wizard, thus modifying his modprobe.conf file and breaking any chance of sound, was Puppy showing the actual chipset in his machine or a different (incorrectly set by the Sound Wizard) one?

Patriot's .pet does fix the sound issue on my Dell Mini-9, without requiring me to manually modify my own modprobe.conf file, but I did not use it on my buddy's Gateway, so that remains unconfirmed in this particular case with these Gateways. I will say that I do not believe that running Patriot's .pet has any real downside to it; I doubt it will break anything and know it will fix some sound issues, as it did on my Dell machine.

And yes, Ricky, it may be that opening and saving the BIOS might set or reset something important -- although I am much too new to understand what or why. Both of us opened and saved our BIOS files and both of these machines have sound. Thank you very much for pointing that out!

My buddy has since re-claimed his Gateway laptop, so I have nothing further to test with.

I have been trying to get sound working on the new wife's Gateway 7326GZ with similar Intel hardware and having the same problems.

I might have a few more bits of info to try and track down the problem.
Sound worked longer ago using 4.0.3 (found old cd, booted and sound works)
No sound under 4.3 full (or Tuxx's 4.31.1)
BUT I do get sound using 4.3 small!!!
It seems it may have some thing to do not just with the sound but also the modem which seems to use the same hardware.
In full it loads the hfs modem module, but small loads intel8x0m (same in 4.0.3)
I tried blacklisting all the hfs modules, still no sound.
Added intel8x0m. No sound.
Added other modules that were different between 4.0.3 and 4.3 : slamr and slusb. No sound.
Checked modem. Still showed ttyhfs0. Erased, rebooted and re-probed and found ttysl0?? Modem seems to work, but no Sound.
For grins I re-ran ALSA config. I hear the speakers click when module installs, but no sound.
Took out the slamr and slub modules I added earlier, and ran ALSA config again, same result.

Does anything here make sense??
What is different between 4.0.3 and 4.3?? The "zdrv" file? Why does having extra drivers cause the wrong one(s) to load? Are the extra drivers broken?
Is it something else all together? I have came to the limit of my knowledge, can anyone give a hand?

Side note - may be important - Sound worked in and earlier version of Fedora (F8?) but is also broken in F10 and F11 as well. Is there a common problem here? ALSA broken?
I might dig up my old F8 disks and give it a spin as well to see what is different and report back.
I'll never get her to drop M$ if I can't crack this. And 4.3 (and 4.31.1) are so slick!!

No sound under 4.3 full (or Tuxx's 4.31.1)
BUT I do get sound using 4.3 small!!!

That report is KEY. Anyone care to put a, ahem ... bug in Barry's ear about this?_________________hangout: ##b0rked on irc.freenode.net
diversion:http://alienjeff.net - visit The Fringe
quote: "The foundation of authority is based upon the consent of the people." - Thomas Hooker

BUT cannot find a modem. This doesn't bother me too much since I never use it, but would be nice if it worked in an emergency.

Apparently the reason sound worked in small was because the hfs modem modules were not included, so they were not installed. The sound card seems to need snd_intel9x0m loaded and it conflicts with some of the hfs modules and will not load. (I found this error when I tried modprobe -v snd_intel8x0)

Now, I am sure there is a better / more permanent way doing this (give preference to one module over another??) but I am not familiar enough with how all of the drivers interact to find a better way on my own.

Maybe some one could suggest a better solution to Barry for the next release??

Thanks to all of you in this thread for your perseverance on this complex issue. As instigator of the Conexant modem support, I feel a responsibility to join in. Your information gives me a lot to work with.

I would like to take this up in the 4.3 Bugs thread, since the problems may be aggravated by the 4.3 addition of those drivers, as well as the patching of the ALSA driver to accommodate Conexant HDA modems.

I am concerned that there is an apparent conflict in Puppy's choice of modem drivers. But I see only the ID of the sound card here and need to know the ID of the modem. That ID triggers the driver selection. It could be that the same ID is accociated with both the Intel and HSF drivers. Could someone post (in 4.3 Bugs) what PupScan (in 4.3, with the zp430305.sfs file included) shows for the PCI interfaces for sound and modems? Also please note which sound and modem drivers are actually loaded (lsmod) in the various cases.

I am also interested in attempting to automate handling of situations requiring special "model =" updates to modprobe.conf. But that appears to be of lower priority, if I understand the conclusions you all have come to. Thank you for any further help you can provide to work this out for everyone.
Richard

lwill,
You imply that the MODDULESCONFIG edit is needed. I am not currently submitting that technique for 4.3.1, so am curious whether it is really necessary. Will your ALSA fix alone solve the problem?

My take from your experience with that mod (reported via PM to me) is that intel8x0m got loaded first and the HSF modules (mysteriously) came later. Although I can't explain why the HSFs were loaded, since we were overriding their use, the result suggests there is a requirement for the modules to load in that sequence. There may be a better way to do that. What happens without that mod? And (with the mod) does it still work after a reboot? Since HSF disables intel8x0m, that might prevent its loading after the first time.

To help me understand this more, could you post the lsmod output from the successful Fedora run, as well as that from the good puppy run? I remain concerned about getting this HSF-and-sound thing right. Thanks.
Richard

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